part0010

Pete had never known a time when one coin had kept so much money in rapt suspense. Paddy enjoyed having the coins wrapped around his wheat stock, and teasingly suggested leaving off right there. He yawned and went silent.

The coins let out a collective groan, and then outraged, they clamored for the penny to finish his tale. Satisfied that he had earned their undivided attention, Paddy smiled and resumed where he had left off:

Ned had landed in the shoebox face up, and so he was almost sure that none of the coins knew his four-cent value .

The chief said, “I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”

He nodded with an air of solemnity. “Me and my brother bison.”

“Wait for The Four, they said. The Four will show the way. That’s been the tradition ever since coinage entered the great marketplace.”

“Four what?” Ned asked

“Show me,” the chief demanded.

“Show you what?”

“Your mark. Turn over.”

“How?” Ned chuckled nervously. “It’s not like we can just flip ourselves over, you know?”

“The Four can,” the chief insisted. “Show me your mark,” he ordered again.

Ned let out a sigh of exasperation, grunted in a feeble attempt at budging, and of course, nothing happened.

“Really,” the chief grumbled, his voice heavy with disappointment—not in his mad myth, but in Ned.

“Sorry to let you down, Chief, but I’m a coin just like you.”

The chief snorted, and then he cried, “Opa !”

The old Indian lurched towards Ned in a series of bucking skips. With his final hop, the chief stomped down on Ned’s edge like a squidger disc used in a game of tiddlywinks, and flipped him over.

The other coins gasped in amazement, though Ned wasn’t sure if their surprise was at the chief’s extraordinary gymnastics or Ned’s humiliating FOUR CENT inscription.

“The Four!” the chief proclaimed.

“But-but, how did you know?” For Ned, the only explanation was that the chief had caught a glimpse of his backside when he tumbled into the shoebox.

“Time is short and your journey is long,” the chief replied, ignoring Ned’s question. “You have much to learn, Four. Are you ready?”

Ned looked to the other coins in the box for an explanation but they were still blinking, gobsmacked.

Finally, one of the coins, a pock-faced, bent and greenish dime the others called Dinky, shrugged and said, “Until now, we all thought the chief was blind, deaf, and dumb.”

“So, nu ?” the chief said. “What’s it going to be, Four? Are you ready to accept your destiny?”

“Coins have a destiny?”

“Mine was to instruct you, Four. Are you going to deny me that?”

“I-I wouldn’t want to deny you of anything, Sir.”

“Chief Iron Tail of the Lakota Bison Clan,” he said.

“Chief Iron Tail, Sir.”

The other coins in the box observed Ned and the chief with great interest. They knew they were in the presence of something miraculous, and although they tried to mimic what Ned and the chief were doing, no amount of straining resulted in so much as a hiccup of movement.

Because of what Ned had learned on his own about the inherent powers contained within a coin’s mottos—IN GOD WE TRUST and E PLURIBUS UNUM—he was a fast study. After his first day, he had achieved locomotion. By the end of day two, he was bucking laps around the inside of the shoebox.

Chief Iron Tail told Ned that bucking was only one of the abilities that a coin could master, if he put his mind to it. To the further bewilderment of Ned and the rest of the shoebox, the chief said that legend told of The Four achieving standing, somersaulting, and even twirling. The chief himself could not do these things, but he was certain that The Four could. The chief explained that such things, and possibly other, even more marvelous feats were possible.

“But why me?” Ned asked.

“All coinage,” the chief replied, “but habit is strong with coins, and they are incapable of imagining locomotion or anything but inertness. Once a coin overcomes the false boundaries of the possible, such abilities as I am describing become as natural as speech. You, Four, are unique. Your journey has prepared you for this.”

“But why would you believe such a thing?” Ned asked.

“The lineage of the Lakota Bison Clan traces back to the earliest shekels, to the great chiefs known as the Coinim. As descendants of the Coinim, we receive visions. I saw you in a vision.”

“A vision? Of Ned Nickel?”

The chief nodded gravely. “Of The Four. I did not know your name—just your true value. I first saw you in a Lakota sweat lodge during one of the Indians’ secret ceremonies. A voice spoke to me from a campfire within the lodge. The fire burned but the logs were not consumed. The voice reminded me that I was a descendent of the great Coinim, and then foretold the coming of a rare coin, a four-cent nickel—The Four—who would arrive to the marketplace and fulfill a great destiny.”

Ned coughed, not believing his ear. A coin—a mere nickel minus a cent, no less—a great destiny? It was preposterous.

“What kind of destiny, Chief?”

“You don’t know?”

Ned shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“Then later, Four. We have much work to do.”

“Um, Chief Iron Tail, Sir. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that name.”

“‘The Four’? Why not?”

“I’m just not. I kinda like keeping my defect a secret, you know?”

“Would you rather I call you Bucking Thunder?” the chief offered.

“It has a nice ring to it,” Ned admitted. “Very Indian-like too.”

“Forget it,” the chief snapped. “The Four! That’s what the Coinim have always called you, and I’m not going to change over two thousand years of tradition because it might hurt your puny feelings. Get over it. Embrace your uniqueness, Four!”

“Whatever you say, Chief,” Ned mumbled.

The chief scowled at Ned’s skepticism. “We have a saying among us, Four: Gam zu l’tovah. I want you to inscribe this motto upon your heart.”

“Sure, Chief, but what does it mean?”

“It is the ancient tongue for ‘This too is for the best.’ It will come in handy during your journey. And remember, Four, a drop of self-doubt will neutralize an ocean of faith. You must banish the black hounds of doubt from your mind and cling to faith like an infant to his mother’s breast. Coinworld is depending on you.”

“Come, we must continue your training. I sense that time is very short.”

The chief bucked over to a clearing at the far end of the shoebox and whistled to Ned to join him.

“All that we have been working on was to prepare you for the next step in your education,” the chief said. “Bucking has strengthened you and given you locomotion. But it is slow. The Four must be quick and nimble.”

Ned nodded along, but he had no idea what the old Indian with a buffalo on his buttside could be talking about. That he had achieved bucking seemed fabulous enough to Ned.

“Everything under the sky has a purpose,” stated the chief. “Do you agree?”

“Why, yes, Sir. I suppose I do.”

“Did the Great Minter create you square as a waffle? ”

“No, Sir. Round as a flapjack, Sir.”

“Exactly. And have you ever seen a square wheel?”

“That would be a queer thing indeed,” Ned replied.

“Good. So if wheels are round, and you are round; is there any reason why you cannot roll like they do?”

“Well, there is the not-so-insignificant fact that a wheel rolls only when set aright. Also, wheels must be pushed or pulled, or driven by a motor or something.”

“Your inner wampum is your motor, Four.”

“Inner wampum, Sir?”

“Coiled, primal energy. Your divine will. Your untapped intestinal fortitude. If you can buck, then you can roll.”

“Buck ‘n’ roll?”

“Don’t argue with me, Four.”

“But there is still the little matter of standing, Sir.”

At that, the chief bucked over to Ned and cried, “Opa !” He slammed his edge down on Ned’s rim and popped him vertical.

Ned waved to and fro trying to maintain balance. “Wo…wo…whoa,” he said, straining to keep erect. After a second, he fell flat on his face. “Oomph !”

“Repeat!” the chief commanded. “Opa !” He bucked and flipped Ned upright again.

Ned wobbled like a man on a tightrope, and this time crashed on his backside.

Ned and the chief reran the exercise over and over, but Ned could only remain vertical for a few moments at most, and they weren’t pretty moments either.

The other coins found the show comical, but after an hour they stopped laughing and began to offer words of encouragement.

“You can do it, Ned!” shouted Dinky Dime.

“Focus,” the chief said. “Center yourself. See yourself as the moon. The moon is but a great nickel in the sky rolling around the Earth.”

The chief repeated his edge-stomping trick, and this time Ned wobbled like a man on a unicycle. He rolled an inch forward, then backwards, then forward and back again, struggling to maintain balance. He let out his breath through pursed lips and tried to relax.

Dinky counted off the seconds. “One-one cent, two-one cent, three-one cent … Ten-one cent … fifteen-one cent!”

“I’m doing it!” Ned exclaimed. “I’m doing it!”

He rolled three inches forward and three back. And then he shot straight ahead.

“Uh-oh, how do I stop? … Oomph !”

He smashed into the far side of the shoebox and plopped onto his face.

“Well, that’s one way,” said Harvey, a shot-up 1948 Franklin half dollar, another of the shoebox’s pitiable coins.

Over the course of the next two days, Ned took buck ‘n’ rolling from a practiced art to a knack. He could remain upright indefinitely and with perfect balance, and soon he was zipping forwards and backwards, stopping and starting, and swinging into hairpin turns.

Chief Iron Tail withheld his praise. There was still much to learn and to do. “The shackles of possibility have been shattered, Four,” he said. “You have crossed into unknown territory.”

In order to take The Four’s training to the next level, the chief instructed him in the development of his “inner wampum” and in the building of core strength, whereby Ned learned to fuse his elemental make-up with a higher law of Nature in a kind of synergetic alchemy.

In addition to meditation and the holding of strange, yoga-like poses, the chief ordered The Four to perform an endless number of rim-ups and buck-ups, a coin’s version of push-ups and sit-ups. To assist with this, the chief stacked some of their fellow coins below and atop a corner of Ned’s rim. Once in place, Ned grunted and strained, lifting himself off the floor of the box.

Coins volunteered to be tackling dummies, allowing The Four to ram them with his rim and shove them around the shoebox. The coins gladly took the beating, as it was the only movement many of the coins had known for years.

Ned also worked on steering, speed, and stopping. To improve Ned’s agility and balance, he and the chief bucked the other coins to new positions within the box to act as an obstacle course. Ned then dashed from one end to the other like a running back, weaving between the amazed pennies, nickels, quarters, and Harvey the half dollar. He even plowed or bounced over them as practice for the barriers that he might encounter once he made it back into the marketplace. By the end of the week, Ned was rolling and zigzagging around the inside of the shoebox with ease .

The chief observed Ned’s progress with stone-faced pride. The Four had exceeded his expectations.

No one, however, was more amazed than Ned himself. He felt like a new nickel, and the freedom he had achieved was exhilarating. He ached to try out his powers in the outside world, but mostly to use his newfound locomotion to search for Franny the Peace Dollar.

Ned wondered when that might be. The other coins in the box had been trapped in there for years already, including the chief. He asked the chief how much longer he thought he’d be held captive in the shoebox.

“The Four has a destiny,” the wise old Indian insisted, “and all destinies have their time frames and their trials. You will not remain here long, Four, and I’m afraid that your trials will be great.”

Ned looked about the box at the collection of misfit coins and was overcome with guilt.

“If what you say is true, I can’t just leave you guys here,” he protested.

“Part of our destiny was to help The Four with his,” the chief rejoined solemnly.

The other coins nodded and uttered their agreement.

Dinky the dime said, “Don’t worry about us, Ned. Have you ever seen an uglier collection of coins? We are the dregs of coinage and are better off here than anywhere else.”

“That’s right,” said Betty, an 1898 Barber quarter.

The liberty lady would have been considered very rare by numismatists, but the only thing that still shined on the scarred and tainted quarter was the light in her eye .

“I feel lucky to have lived long enough to witness such a miraculous thing,” Betty continued. “I had lost all faith in my mottos, but now I can trust again.”

“Same here,” said Pip Penny, a warped ’29 one-center, black as coal and with more dings than a head of a nail. “I’ve experienced some shocking sights in my life, and have suffered about as much as my little copper body can bear, but your achievement has made it all worth it if it meant leading up to this moment.”

The smattering of other coins, twelve including the chief, expressed similar feelings.

Ned didn’t know how to respond to his new friends. He felt sorry for them and was touched deeply by their support and regard for him. He wanted to help the motley crew, but what could he do? Besides, despite the chief’s confidence in the legend of The Four, his own freedom was still in question.

“Enough schmoozing,” the chief scolded. “We must prepare, not despair! Four, rolling will do you no good if you can’t stand on your own. Outside this shoebox there will be no one to flip you upright. You must learn to do so yourself.”

“But how, Chief?”

The chief began to hum, “Hoom-bahda-buh, hoom-bahda-buh…”

“Chief? What are you doing?”

“Humming. That’s how I think. “Hoom-bahda-buh, hoom-bahda-buh…” He looked up, and shrugged. “I got nothing.”

“Huh? But you’re the chief,” Ned said.

“Hey, shmendrik, if I knew how to stand upright you don’t think I’d be showing off? Listen, the knowledge and power are within you somewhere. Try.”

Ned tried and tried, again and again, but all he could do was manage to buck side to side and forwards and backwards. “It’s no use,” he sighed.

“Believe!” the chief commanded.

“I believe, I believe,” Ned said. “But I can’t overcome the laws of nature.”

“Then use them,” said Betty the Barber quarter.

“How?” Ned asked, exasperated.

“I’ve been watching you,” Betty said. “Each buck contains a packet of energy—a degree of momentum. But it is directed in a line, and so you are going forwards or backwards, left or right. Try to lean slightly to one side with each buck. Buck forward, catch yourself, and use the momentum to rebound in a tilting motion along your edge. Each time you should gather a little more energy and angle. Continue in this fashion as fast as you can and I think you’ll start to create a reverse wobbling effect. Like what happens sometimes when a person drops us on a table or floor. We revolve briefly on our edge and make that hollow ringing sound until we lose momentum and collapse flat. Reverse the motion and you might obtain enough of an angle to catch your balance.”

Ned and the chief exchanged glances. The chief shrugged.

“All right, Chief,” Ned said, “stand back. I might explode or something.” He took some deep breaths and gathered his wampum. “Opa !”

Ned threw everything he had into Betty’s gyroscopic theory. He bucked to and fro and soon he began to revolve just as Betty had hypothesized. Little by little, Ned increased his angle of inclination. The other coins shouted words of encouragement with each wobble. Even the usually composed and taciturn chief joined in, whooping in his Lakota tongue.

And then, all at once, Ned popped upright and balanced as straight and sure as a flagpole. “Woohoo!” he cried, and then he zipped off in a victory lap around the box.

Bucking and locomotion were fantastic enough, but for Ned’s fellow coins, seeing Ned achieve verticality all on his own unhinged their jaws right over their edges.

Ned zoomed up to Chief Iron Tail and bowed to him in gratitude.

The chief nodded, a small grin cracking his usual flinty expression. “The Four,” he pronounced, as if in validation of all that his Lakota elders and the Coinim had prophesied.

But Ned had one more trick up his wig. He backed up an inch, and then he started to twirl in place like a whirling dervish, spinning faster and faster until he was a dazzling, silvery blur. He spun so fast that some of the coins thought that he’d either drill straight through the box, or take off like a rocket.

Betty the quarter said, “Careful, Ned. The friction might ignite the box and smelt us all!”

Ned decelerated and came to a perfectly balanced halt. “Whew,” he said. “That’ll get the ore in you flowing!”

Norman, a smooshed-faced ’44 nickel who looked like he’d been left on a train track, said, “Ned, my man, you’ve made a believer out of this crushed, disillusioned nickel. If I ever make it out of this shoebox, I’ll be singing your praises to every pocket, purse, or cash register I find myself in. ”

“Shucks, gang,” Ned replied, “I could never have done it without your help. And Madam Betty Barber Quarter, you’re a genius!”

“Yeah, Betty,” said Dinky the dime, “how did you come up with that idea, anyway? Where does a coin learn such a thing?”

“Ah, well,” Betty answered professorially, “I spent thirty years in the laboratory of a genius scientist. How do you think I got this way?” She rolled her eye in presentation of her badly grilled and beaten face. “The lunatic used me in probably half his experiments. I was his screwdriver, wedge, and even a conductor for passing millions of volts of electricity. That’s why I have no hair left. Anyway, I used to watch the man experiment with all kinds of dynamos and other gadgets. I picked up a lot.”

Ned said, “Mad scientist, you say? Do you remember the man’s name?”

“Sure. Nikola Tesla.”

“You didn’t happen to run into a 1922 Peace Dollar while you were there, did you?”

“That wouldn’t be anything you forget,” said Pip Penny.

“Not when she’s as sweet and beautiful as Francis was,” Betty acknowledged with a wistful smile. “No, siree.”

“So you did know Franny!” Ned exclaimed.

“Not for long, sadly, but sure I did. It was a long time ago—around 1924, I think. I had already suffered most of Mr. Tesla’s experiments and tinkering, so I was a frightful sight, but Francis wasn’t put off by my ugliness. She spoke only words of compassion and encouragement. She was an angel.”

“I don’t think you’re ugly,” lisped Harvey, the 1948 Benjamin Franklin half dollar .

Like the other pieces in the box, poor Harvey was but a remnant of his once gleaming and glorious self. Just two years after minting, he suffered the fate of falling into the hands of a trick-shooter in a traveling Wild West show. Repeatedly tossed into the air and shot, the poor guy was mangled and pockmarked with lead. The Liberty Bell on his reverse side had more cracks than a New York sidewalk, and he spoke in lisps and whistles because of his shattered teeth.

“Then maybe you need your eye examined,” replied Betty. “But thank you, Harvey.”

“Was this Francis dame your girl or something?” Pip Penny asked Ned.

“Just friends,” Ned answered shyly.

“Hah!” clucked the penny. “A coin doesn’t blush like you are over a friendship. You’re redder than a cranberry.”

Norman the nickel asked the chief, “Is there any mention of The Four having a princess in that legend of yours?”

The chief furled his brow and licked his lips in thought, and then he shook his head. “I don’t recall any princess, no.”

“Just a friend,” Ned repeated. “We spent a short spell in the silk coin purse of a wealthy heiress, that’s all.”

“We’ve all spent time in a purse,” said Pip Penny, “but you rarely remember the faces.”

“I’ve never thpent a day in the lap of luxury,” lisped half dollar Harvey, the words whistling and spitting from his cracked teeth. “And I’d remember any gal who thmiled at me.”

“Yes, Pip,” scolded Betty the quarter. “Some of us have known nothing but grinding grief.” She turned to Harvey and flashed him a big, black-toothed smile, a remnant from her years of electrocutions.

Harvey blushed in surprise and smiled back, displaying his own teeth’s jagged remains.

Dinky the dime interrupted the budding courtship with a question for the chief. “Chief,” he asked, “what is The Four supposed to do with his newfound talents anyway?”

“Save Coinworld.”

The coins stared at Iron Tail with their mouths hanging open and wordless. They swung their heads towards Ned and saw their own dumb expressions on his face.